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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28942500">(All my life, all I ever wanted was) A love that lasted longer than the silence</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan'>lisachan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Leoverse [293]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Glee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:13:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28942500</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cody tells us his whole story, from when he was a child up to the moment he met Leo for the very first time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Male Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Leoverse [293]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>(All my life, all I ever wanted was) A love that lasted longer than the silence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>WARNING:</b> This story is a spin-off for Broken Heart Syndrome and is set within the series. This means that it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler. It is also some sort of a prequel, I guess, as it depicts events related to a major character that happened way before BHS began.</p>
<p>This was also written for the first week of the second episode of the Explorers challenge @landedifandom.net, though I cannot, for the life of me, remember on what prompts. It was over three months ago, bear with me.</p>
<p>#ProtectCodyAtAllCostsSquad</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Adults always had a very nice opinion of Cody, despite his weirdness. </p>
<p>He’s always been a quiet person, he was a pretty chill child and he tried his mightiest to be as less problematic as possible as a teenager, but he had hobbies that tended to isolate him, like drawing and reading, and that’s always been a little hard to understand for his parents. They were often asking him if it was really okay for him to stay home for the weekends, never go out to playdates or to meet his friends after school, and they were a little weirded out whenever he answered that he didn’t really want to, that he’d much rather stay at home and spend time in his bedroom, reading silly, cheesy fantasy young adult novels and then drawing fan art of the male main character kissing various other characters that never resembled the main female heroine.</p>
<p>Despite their inability to understand him, still, his parents have always been happy with him. Cody cannot for the life of him imagine why. Sure, he never got into trouble. Never did stupid things that put him in harm’s way, never ended up causing the family to look bad in front of the neighbors. But he’s been as much of a shadow as a son as he imagines possible to be. Always silent, always private, always locked in on himself. He has never tried to explain himself to his parents – he attempted, once, to explain himself to himself, through a few pictures connected by arrows that tried to give his life and choices some sense of consequentiality when, really, there was none.</p>
<p>He got one thing, though, when he tried that little self-explanation act, one thing about life and human beings: the self is unexplainable. There is no rhyme or reason to anything a person is, it ultimately all falls down to this is me, this is who I am, and I am as I am because I am.</p>
<p>The self, he guesses, <i>is</i> self-explanatory in itself, after all. To really illustrate what we are to the world, we just gotta be ourselves, and that’s it.</p>
<p>Somehow that kind of attitude earned him a lot of fans among grown-ups. His teachers, his tutors, his parents’ friends and his relatives, they always praised him for his quietness. He’s introspective, they said. Cody never really got the meaning of the word. To be <i>introspective</i>. Isn’t that just thinking about one’s own feelings? Doesn’t everybody do that?</p>
<p>Apparently not, as all grown-ups in his life regarded him as completely unique, especially among other kids his age. He’s so <i>sensitive</i>. So <i>delicate</i>. He has a <i>beautiful soul</i>, they would say, and Cody would wonder— what would they know of his soul? Could they see it? He hoped not— his soul wasn’t a good picture to take a look at, even in his obliviousness to what would entail to be a normal kid he understood that. He wasn’t <i>normal</i>.</p>
<p>He was twelve years old when he fell in love for the first time. He’s so innocent, everybody would say, because he hid it out. But he could spend hours fantasizing about being held by Mr. Lawrence, his English teacher. He was young and handsome, he had deep, brown, sweet eyes, he always smiled, and Cody could think about nothing else but what would his beard feel against his skin if he kissed him.</p>
<p>Sometimes he thought about putting these daydreams on paper. Graphite on stark white. He thought about showing them to his parents, his relatives, all the other adults regarding him as some little angel. What about this, he would have said. Is my soul still beautiful?</p>
<p>He never had the guts to really do that. Neither did he show anything related to his secret fantasies to his parents, nor he drew them down. He was content with using proxies, characters that were alive only in books. He stuck to characters invented by someone else because he felt like inventing some of his own would’ve made it too personal. If he had other life histories, personalities created by different authors, with different backgrounds and experiences to play with, he could cling to the idea that perhaps he wasn’t just using them as placeholders for himself, for the things he wanted and didn’t think he should’ve wanted.</p>
<p>He let his wanting drown into the silence. The silence was a nice place to hide everything out, no one ever tried to investigate it. If there was something, only one thing all grown-ups lamented about him, was that he was so <i>quiet</i>. Oh, but then that was probably just him being pensive. He’s so thoughtful, that one, so mature. What if he’s quiet, that’s not a flaw, is it? It just means he thinks a lot before he speaks.</p>
<p>(And then never speaks at all.)</p>
<p>All in all, Cody never had troubles with adults. They seemed to understand him, or at least respect his choices. Or they probably found a quiet child easier to handle if compared to a very noisy one. That he didn’t know, but it was okay. He felt like it wasn’t his place to understand adulthood. The adults and him could keep being very separate worlds that rarely, if ever, came in contact, and whenever they did there was just praising. That was fine. He didn’t want anything different from that.</p>
<p>What he’s always struggled with are people his age.</p>
<p>Back when he was a child, other children straight-out <i>hated</i> him. Everything about him, really, from the way he looked to the way he spoke to the way he behaved both with the adults and with them. They told him he was <i>strange</i>, and that was a concept that had never come to him before from adults. It was baffling, in the beginning. What did he mean that he was strange, what was so strange about him?</p>
<p>He looked like a girl, the children said, it was just not right. Too much of a delicate face. Eyes too big, too blue, too wide. And what was it with his skin, it looked like porcelain. Maybe that was why they kept shoving him into walls. To see if it would break.</p>
<p>(He sometimes hoped it would.)</p>
<p>He also dressed in a strange way. Cody always knew he had weird taste in clothing, even when he was very very little and his mother took him out for shopping, he always felt drawn towards black things, which turned every shopping session into a struggle, as there weren’t much total-black outfit options for children in the shops.</p>
<p>Oh, but he loved the black, he loved how uniform it looked. It reminded him of a blackboard, something he could’ve drawn upon in white chalk if he wanted. (He never actually did it, but it was the potential he found interesting, not the actual drawing.)</p>
<p>One day, he was still in kindergarten, they were supposed to work on a crafty project for Father’s Day, and they were supposed to work in couples, cutting shapes into colorful cardboard, drawing chubby words on the card and the envelope, splattering and gluing glitters everywhere. All the kids were quick to find themselves a companion, all but one, he still remembers her like a nightmare you can’t shake off: her name was Margareta. He turned to look at her, she turned to look at him, and the moment she realized they were the only one left she burst into tears. She was bawling her eyes out so much the teacher got super scared and rushed by her side, gathered her in her arms and squeezed her soothingly, and when she asked Margareta what was the problem the child just pointed her fingers at him and, still crying inconsolably, said she didn’t want to work with him, because he was scary.</p>
<p>Scary, the teacher said, Cody’s not scary, he’s a good kid, and he draws so well, he’ll help you create a beautiful card for your daddy. But Margareta was adamant, she didn’t wanna work with him. He was scary. He was all in black all the time. Like the monster under her bed. She didn’t <i>trust</i> him. And then another kid just threw a yeah, he’s so weird, like it was normal, like it didn’t matter, and Cody never really understood if the other kids really thought the same or if some kind of herd effect kicked in, but they all went through with it, yeah, Cody’s weird, he’s so weird, so so weird, and Margareta started crying louder, terrified at the mere idea of having to share a mushroom-shaped table with him, sitting on a green-grass carpet next to him, and the mix of sounds between her cry, the kids’ laughter and the weak, shocked voice of the teacher— that was the first sound that really broke through his silence.</p>
<p>And then pushed him back into it.</p>
<p>He went through kindergarten only speaking when necessary, mostly when it was a teacher asking questions. Did the same through elementary school, and things were pretty fine. But then middle school started, and he started changing. His face was turning softer, his eyes bigger, he let his hair grow down his neck and he started choosing his clothes from online shops where they had things he really liked, clothes covered in pins and crosses, artfully torn apart, intertwining black with reds and greens and pinks that shone bright in his eyes. He knew perfectly well that was a stupid mistake, that he should’ve hidden, should’ve done all possible not to catch anyone’s attention, but he really liked those clothes, he liked how he looked in them, he felt good when he wore them in the morning, even if they made him feel dreadful when someone else stared his way.</p>
<p>Middle school was when his schoolmates started testing him by pushing him against walls. Down toilets. Into trash bins in the parking lot right outside. A trend that would continue in high school.</p>
<p>There was a guy there, his name was Malcolm Boyd. One of the ugliest young men Cody had ever seen. Short and large and with stumpy, bandy legs. He played in the football team, though, so he had lots of friends, friends he loved to keep entertained. Yet he had nothing, really, to entertain them with, Cody suspected he wasn’t much fun and didn’t have a very bright conversation, but one thing he could do, and that was tormenting him. Cody knew very deeply into his heart, and he accepted it like an innate notion, that something about him tickled Malcolm in secret, forbidden ways. He took no pleasure in it, it was of no consolation, because it was the very reason why Malcolm always managed to come up with the most fucked up ideas on how to keep him on his toes, how to humiliate him and break him.</p>
<p>Cody used the silence to protect himself from him. Malcolm had this habit, he would ask him questions and call him names. How are we feeling today, pansy? How’s it going, fairy? What’re you doing, sissy? These weren’t questions, they were introductory movements to a crashing symphony of collision and explosion and violence that Cody didn’t want to listen to. So he made sure that every time Malcolm asked him a question he just stopped moving, he pulled his hoodie up to cover his head and stood silent until the drilling was over.</p>
<p>It almost never worked, but speaking would’ve been worse, because then everyone around would’ve had to listen to his stupid answers. His weakness would’ve manifested itself. His self would’ve explained itself to the people surrounding him in the only way it knew how to, by showing. And everyone would know Cody was just as much as a little scared baby as Malcolm made him out to be.</p>
<p>Silence, instead, gave him some sort of dignity to cling to. And it gave him nothing for Malcolm to twist, nothing to work with. Malcolm was left to his devices, if he wanted to humiliate him he had to create something from scratch.</p>
<p>(He never failed, though.)</p>
<p>The public mockery and bullying weren’t the worst part, though. Cody could sit through them easily because he never had to fear Malcolm could do something actually life-threatening – not in the middle of the hallway, where everyone could see.</p>
<p>No, what Malcolm did when they were alone— <i>that</i> was what Cody really feared. Malcolm used to follow him out of the school, on his way back home. Sometimes Cody took a longer road, or just roamed around for hours, just to see if he would still follow him despite that, and he always would. He was his shadow, following in his steps only a few feet behind him. Staring at him all through it.</p>
<p>Then he would find a spot. Dark and isolated enough. Cody tried to avoid them as possible, he had a mental topographic map of the whole city, that helped most of the time, but Malcolm would always find somewhere, there was <i>always</i> some place he could use to his advantage.</p>
<p>He would push him into the darkness. He would crash him into the wall. Sometimes he banged his head on it, once, twice, just to make him all numb and dizzy, yeah, that’s how I want you, you retard, bloody and drooling. Cody would bite at his own tongue and Malcolm would grin like a madman. Sometimes he had a knife with himself. Sometimes he just used his hands. He torn his clothes apart, pushed him all over. Left mark on him with the blade and with his nails and teeth. He would punch him in the guts until he could see bruises bloom like ink stains underneath his skin. Just scream, you fucking faggot, he would yell in his face, droplets of spit raining down on him, scream, beg me to stop.</p>
<p>Cody would never make a sound.</p>
<p>He remained quiet through the torture, through the mockery, through the threats. He remained quiet through high school, that’s how he survived it.</p>
<p>He was honestly surprised, proud at himself, for graduating without too many permanent scars on his soul, or on his skin, for that matter. Malcolm gave him one last gift on graduation day – he had him kneeling on the bathroom floor, kept his mouth open with both thumbs at the corners and then spit on his tongue – but he disappeared the morning after. Cody was free. No more being hunted down the hallways and the streets. No more being followed by the wicked chuckles and the mockery of his schoolmates in and out of every classroom. No more sitting alone and isolated on the bleachers during PE hours.</p>
<p>When his parents asked him what he wanted to do now, he asked them if there was any chance they could afford to get him to college, and they answered with a smile that they had saved money all their lives specifically for this. Cody cried, hugging his mom while his dad embarrassedly looked away. Perhaps his parents couldn’t really understand him, but was that really necessary? Wasn’t it okay, as long as they loved each other?</p>
<p>Things changed when he started attending UNOH. He got a room for himself in an apartment very close to campus, he shared the house with two more people and, surprisingly, they didn’t seem to hate him. Granted, they didn’t seem to love him either, they had been friends forever and rarely if ever cast a look in his general direction, really, but the change of pace was astounding. He didn’t feel under constant threat anymore. Sharing the table with them at breakfast and dinner wasn’t dreadful. They spoke loudly, made a lot of jokes, but none of them entailed mockery aimed towards him. They just chatted like normal human beings, sometimes with him too. And students on campus never looked twice at him. All the weirdness that seemed to be so much of an insurmountable obstacle for the kids he used to attend school with, was of no consequence for these people. He could dress however he liked, do whatever he wanted. No one harassed him. Sure, no one spoke to him either. But that was okay, great, actually, amazing. The silence was comfortable. If, to protect himself, he just had to be silent for the rest of his life, he was fine with it.</p>
<p>But then William charged into his life and disrupted it.</p>
<p>William was handsome. He was charming, rich, talented, charismatic. He had a group of friends with whom he self-published poetry, he organized flash mobs where they climbed on top of statues around campus and through the city and recited verses of their poems out loud, for everyone to hear. His poetries were violent and shameless, all contrasting colors and clashing words, and he wasn’t ashamed of them, he was proud of how hard they hit people, he <i>wanted</i> to hit them. Make them suffer. I hope this leaves you scarred and bruised, he always said before reciting a poem. People listening to his poetry often ended up crying, or inexplicably enraged. Sometimes they left the room before he could finish a reading.</p>
<p>Cody adored him. He knew him before William first approached him, it was impossible not to, William was a celebrity around campus. He sat through all of his readings and he reveled in the way William’s words made him feel. Somehow he seemed to manage to frame the abuse and pain of his life with but a few words. There was one poem in particular, it was one people never really wanted to listen to, and that William mercilessly shoved down their throats during practically every reading. There you stand, the poem said near its end, on the edge of your life, and you turn back, and you swallow, and you taste nothing. So you spit, and you taste nothing. And you try to recall, what were you eating. What did you eat all along. And you look down. And the abyss is gnawing its teeth at you. And you realize you weren’t eating. You were being eaten all the while. And what you tasted, right there, that’s digestion.</p>
<p>He could listen to his voice repeating that word for hours. That was exactly what he felt— digested by his life. He felt like, without ever having had the chance to really taste what it meant to live fully and happily, life had just tore through him with pointy, sharp teeth, and then started the slow process of disintegrating him within its stomach. He already felt like he was turning into dust. Soon enough there would be nothing left of him.</p>
<p>In the silence surrounding him, William’s voice made an echo Cody could not tire of.</p>
<p>And then, one night William just came up to him after one of his readings. Told him he had noticed him attend basically all the readings he had ever done and asked him if he had a favorite poem among the ones he had listened to.</p>
<p>(So typical of William to ask such a self-referenced question before even asking about his name. But that Cody did not know and could not know back then.)</p>
<p>Cody answered that his favorite poem was the one about the abyss eating out at you. That he felt like that poem spoke about him. As he spoke, his voice felt distant and rusty for lack of use. Unpleasant to listen to. But William was grinning, and he looked so handsome. No one ever answered with that one, he said, everyone hated it. But it was his favorite too.</p>
<p>(Also typical of William to have a favorite poem among his own poems.)</p>
<p>Cody’s heart just leaped at that. He felt his stomach explode into a million butterflies, and they were all biting at his insides to carve themselves more space to fly around in their crazed state. The silence disappeared and turned into the more deafening sound Cody had ever heard – the sound of his own heart beating faster and faster as he prayed, <i>prayed</i> for William to keep looking at him, keep speaking to him.</p>
<p>William held his hand out for him. Introduced himself. Asked for his name. Cody was hooked.</p>
<p>When, after a couple glasses of wine, William asked him to come to his place for the night, Cody answered with such a resounding yes the whole club turned to look at him.</p>
<p>That was the beginning of his personal end, but right then it just felt like the beginning of an actual beginning, and it was nice.</p>
<p>William took him to his place, a fancy flat quite far from campus. He had a car and drove it well, confidently. Cody was drunk and almost dozed off a couple of times on the passenger’s seat. He was embarrassed and blushed when he realized, but William chuckled it off and that sound was so sweet on Cody’s ears he just couldn’t stop smiling.</p>
<p>He was anxious about being alone in his house with him, anxious and a bit frightened. He had never had sex with anyone before, and though he was attracted to William the confidence with which he carried himself spoke of an experienced man, and Cody was terrified he could be a disappointment, as well as he was terrified about the pain, about not having a clue what to do, about not being ready.</p>
<p>But once they were inside William touched his shoulders and Cody turned naturally towards him, like a sunflower following the sun, and William’s lips on his were soft, and his tongue in his mouth tasted good. He wasn’t rough and he wasn’t raw, he was nice and sweet and patient and passionate, and when he carried him to bed Cody was sure that he had wanted nothing in his life more than he wanted now to feel him inside. He was ready. The room was filled with sighs and gasps, and William’s voice as he told him how to move and how to bend and how to spread for him. There was no silence and it felt great.</p>
<p>Cody couldn’t say when things started to change. Everything felt great in the beginning, the very first days, the first couple weeks. William was attentive and careful, he touched him like he was precious. He wrote poems about him on paper sheets torn away from Cody’s sketchbooks, he laid them down on his back after they had sex and he wrote with a pencil, chuckling, reading to him as he went on. All the poems had silly endings because he couldn’t think of serious ones.</p>
<p>Then he started acting differently. At first he was just rougher during sex. Cody didn’t pay that no mind, even when it happened that William hurt him – he thought those to be mistakes, unintentional. Those sweet, docile, careful hands couldn’t be hands that would’ve wanted to cause him pain. He just liked it a little rougher sometimes. It was okay— Cody didn’t dislike it completely. There was something thrilling about being wanted in such a way. A way that left marks and scratches. A way that was a little bloody, a little painful. Like William’s poems. I hope this leaves you scarred and bruised, William would say with a subtle grin as he pushed him down on the bed. And Cody felt good – William was making art. With his body instead than words. But still art.</p>
<p>But then he started becoming punitive. He had something to say about everything Cody said or did, the way he dressed, his drawings, the music he listened to. Don’t speak to me like that, it’s silly, sometimes I think you’re stupid. Don’t put those pants on, they’re ridiculous, you’re not a teenager, grow the fuck up. That painting’s shit, were you even paying attention as you worked? And what are you even listening to? What’s that abomination in your earphones? And what’s that book on your nightstand about? Jesus Christ, are you a retarded stupid little girl?</p>
<p>He told Cody to move in with him and one month before Cody would have been overjoyed about it. Now he felt dreadful, instead, but he still did it. He endured it. Because William was special, so handsome and talented, everyone on campus knew him, and everyone Cody spoke with in classes couldn’t stop telling him how lucky he was that he had such an awesome boyfriend. And William was amazing in public, always careful, always putting him first, never taking his eyes off him, covering him in compliments, telling everyone he just adored him. Until he drove him home and tied him to the bed and left him there with no water till the evening after, hitting him on his legs every time Cody complained, letting him pee himself and shit himself because he wouldn’t release him not even to go to the bathroom. Did you enjoy it tonight, little slut? I could see the way you gloated when I paraded you around. You love to be the center of attention, don’t you? Well I’ll give you the attention you deserve.</p>
<p>Cody hid back into the silence. He squeezed his eyes shut, refused to see, refused to listen. William enjoyed that. He turned him into a doll that he could break and put back together with spit and glue however he liked. Cody put up with everything. He couldn’t go back to the way it was before. He was constantly in pain but he was seen. William saw him. If only to destroy him better.</p>
<p>And then one day William lied down on his back on the bed. Ride me, he said. Cody was weak from the beating he had taken the night before, but he obeyed. He dragged himself up. Sat on William’s lap. Made every possible effort to make him hard and felt triumphantly happy when he managed. Then he pulled himself up on his knees and descended on his groin, helping William’s cock slither inside him, and William just looked at him as he moved up and down a few times. Then he stopped him. One hand firmly latched around his thin wrist. He looked at him, stared right into his eyes.</p>
<p>“I’m so bored,” he said.</p>
<p>The silence was shattered and Cody started screaming. He threw himself off him, covered himself with a blanket, how can you say that, how can you say that, he yelled. William laughed him off. Jesus Christ you really are such an idiot.</p>
<p>He got off the bed, pulled his pants up. He said he was going out. That Cody better not be still there when he got back, or else. He didn’t even need to make it a full threat. Cody knew exactly what those words meant. And so, when William left, crying like a baby he gathered himself up, fetched his few things, pushed them disorderedly into a bag and left. He went back home and his housemates were shocked to see him back after such a long time. So much thinner. His skin so much more bruised than they ever remembered it being.</p>
<p>His room was still available. Cody took it back. The silence was still there, waiting for him, and Cody let himself plunge deeply into it. Except it was different, now, it had changed. It was dense, foamy, suffocating. Cody couldn’t breathe through it. He stopped going out of his room if not to go to the bathroom, stopped studying, stopped reading, stopped drawing. Why am I in so much fucking pain, he asked himself in bewilderment, I’ve been beaten and raped repeatedly over the last few months, that’s all William ever did to me, why do I regret him kicking me out?</p>
<p>He just fucking missed him. He missed being seen by him. And when he fully realized William wouldn’t come back, that it was really over, that there was nothing left for him except the silence, he couldn’t bear it. He could bear everything but not this.</p>
<p>He walked out to the bathroom. Filled a tub with warm water. Sat into it. Sliced his forearms from his wrists to his elbows and just waited for the silence to turn permanent.</p>
<p>(Unfortunately, it didn’t.)</p>
<p>He woke up several hours later, lying down on an uncomfortable bed in the hospital. He felt numb all over, dizzy, confused, vaguely nauseous. His mother was sitting beside him, crying and smiling at the same time, her long black hair ruffled up on her head, cascading down her chest and shoulders, streaked with graying locks. Her tears tripped in her subtle wrinkles before rolling down her red cheeks. She looked so beautiful Cody started crying too, happy that he got a chance to see her again. His father exhaled like a man who was trusting the weight of his whole heart upon that single breath, and Cody wondered how could he ever do such a thing to himself. Not for himself, but for the pain he would’ve caused them had he succeeded. For the pain he was <i>still</i> causing them having failed.</p>
<p>He tried to say he was sorry. His voice made no sound, so he just mouthed the words as his mother hugged him, careful not to move the needle stuck in the back of his hand.</p>
<p>He remembers sleeping for days. Being so weak he couldn’t even feed himself, or drink. He remembers asking himself a lot what was the point of still being alive. Whenever his parents came visiting him, there was noise in the room, but there was still silence in him. And, the moment they were gone, around him too. All that silence. All that nothingness. He had ran away from the abyss eating out at him, but he was back on the verge of it, now. If he stared down into its mouth, those teeth gnawing, they were William’s teeth. He dreamed about jumping in. He dreamed about ending it like that, within him. He dreamed about when they were still together, he wished with all his heart he wouldn’t have survived some of the shit William had put him through. He could’ve suffocated, he could’ve developed an infection from some of his wounds while sitting down for days in his own shit. But none of that happened. Love kept him pointlessly alive. Love couldn’t kill him. Love could do nothing for him, not even break the silence.</p>
<p>Eventually, he was discharged from the hospital. His parents begged him to see a therapist and he did. Dr. Schillinger was understanding and patient, he didn’t pressure him into spilling everything out right away. He waited for when Cody was ready, then he started guiding him through all that mud, all that blood, all that mess. Cody found himself again. A little boy, a frightened boy. Had there ever been one day in his life had hadn’t been in pain for something?, he wondered.</p>
<p>Maybe, he told Dr. Schillinger, I don’t know how to be alive without being in pain too. Maybe I need that, maybe I can’t function like a normal human being.</p>
<p>Dr. Schillinger smiled patiently at that. Mr. Petersen, he told him, no one on this earth is a normal human being. There’s no such thing as a normal human being. There are only people battling through pain, fear, anxiety, sadness, at various and different levels, craving for a moment of light. My job here is to help you get as many moments of light as you possibly can, so that those will outshine all that’s negative about life. But there is no life without negativity. It is part of it, and it must be accepted and understood if you ever want to overcome it.</p>
<p>Cody could understand that. He remembers thinking that the doctor wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, he just needed to hear it from a voice that wasn’t his own, chanting obsessively in the back of his head. Somehow reality felt a little less painful once he acknowledged that pain was and would always be part of it.</p>
<p>The silence became comforting and comfortable again. Cody slipped easily back into it, as he would’ve easily slipped back into an old pair of fitting shoes. He could walk in it, he could breathe in it, he could live in it. One thing he was happy about – William stole a lot from him, but he didn’t steal the silence.</p>
<p>So there would never be love for him, not again, he decided. He remembers the day. He woke up and it was a nice spring early morning. Birds were chirping out his window. He was going to give an exam that day, the first in a long time. He felt serene and ready. Perhaps love just wasn’t for him, he decided. Made things too complicated. Made him too weak. Love was like a hammer, he thought, some materials are prepared to withstand it, like iron and wood, some others can’t, like glass and porcelain. He was made of the latter. He would’ve traded love for the silence. The silence couldn’t break him. That was preferable.</p>
<p>He gave the exam. He passed the exam. He attended his classes. Things turned for the better. He was progressing in school, getting closer to his degree. His parents trusted him to be alone again, he moved back into his room close to campus. His professors were happy with him. Dr. Schillinger was satisfied about their journey together. He was allowed a little less meds. He made a friend, a nice guy, Adam Walker, the best on his course. Everybody loved him, everybody loved his art, and he felt safe because Adam didn’t want anything from him, nothing beyond a nice talk and an exchange of opinions about their production.</p>
<p>He started feeling good, then very good. He was functioning properly. So, when Adam told him about the party, he decided to reward himself. You don’t need to stay all night, Adam said, but the guys in the frat are nice, and my friends are nice, and you’d be fine. Do you want to come?</p>
<p>Cody warned him he’d mostly be by himself. He doesn’t do well in a crowd, not yet, he knows that. He asked if he was allowed to bring his sketchbook, in case he needed to retire into that private part of himself that only drawing can carry him to. Adam said of course – he didn’t seem to mind the idea that Cody already knew that at some point during the night he would’ve turned to loneliness.</p>
<p>So he went. He chose not to drink. He ate a little. Junk food, mostly. That felt amazing. He spoke with Adam for a while, he even chatted with other people. It didn’t feel half bad.</p>
<p>Then he sat down on an armchair in a corner, a little private place. He felt fine, but he just wanted to draw a little while. Just to settle down, just to keep his emotions in control.</p>
<p>And then, “Hello,” someone says. And Cody turns up towards the voice and, standing in front of him, there’s Leonard Karofsky-Hummel. A boy he knows about. He’s renown around campus – he’s a playboy, changing boys and girls more often than he changes his t-shit. Handsome and fun and loud and a little bit reckless.</p>
<p>Cody’s heart plunges down into his stomach as the silence shatters once again. Is this what life is going to be, is that what’s going to happen, over and over again, forever? He will just suffer and destroy himself up to the last inch of life he’s got, and then come back, only to endure it all over again?</p>
<p>He can’t. He decided he wouldn’t. He won’t.</p>
<p>He stands up, then, shuts his sketchbook close and runs out in the backyard. He can see Leo blink confusedly and stand still for a couple of seconds, then he sees him following him outside. The chase feels, admittedly and regrettably, a little thrilling.</p>
<p>He somehow manages to come out of the conversation that follows mostly unscathed. Leo steals a promise to meet again out of him, but Cody does not intend to keep it. He promised what he had to escape, but breaking that promise is not going to weigh on him.</p>
<p>Except when he walks back into his room there’s something else weighing on him.</p>
<p>The silence.</p>
<p>And as Cody lays himself down to sleep and closes his eyes, and pictures of his conversation with Leo dance behind his eyelids, as memories first and as dreams later on, he already knows the promise he wanted to break, he’s going to keep, instead.</p>
<p>Fuck the silence.</p>
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